Secrets of Paris (31 page)

Michael chuckled nervously. Had Anne already found him a seventeenth-century suit? He could imagine her begging him to dress up with her, how difficult it would be to say no. But he would say no. He had made up his mind; he wanted to be with Lydie. At that moment he felt a bizarre reversal of guilt, for being with Anne when he wanted to be with Lydie.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live in the Louvre, even for one night?” Anne asked. “I think of how it must look in the middle of the night, in the darkness, with moonlight coming through the windows …” She lowered her voice, took Michael’s hand. “Let’s do it! Let’s spend tonight right here in the Salle.”

“Anne, there are guards …”

She waved a dismissive hand. Her eyes glittered with excitement. “We’ll be quiet as mice. We can stay upstairs, in the attic storerooms. Beds are there—even nightclothes from every epoch, including our own …”

“No, Anne,” Michael said, knowing that “our own” epoch meant the seventeenth century.

“Oh, you are too rigid,” she said, smiling up at him. “Don’t you
know that in France we value a lack of discipline? It is so important to forget the rules sometimes, to let your spirit be free.”

Standing there, listening to the woman who had been his lover, Michael thought he deserved an award for lack of discipline. He had an impulse to run out of the Louvre, leaving behind everything venerable and ancient, into the bright sunshine. At that moment, gazing at Anne in her wig and crumbling dress, he wanted twentieth-century noise: traffic, loud music, loudspeakers blaring from the tour boats. Standing there with Anne, he felt that the air in the Salle des Quatre Saisons had not moved since the seventeenth century.

“What a trouper you are,” Patrice said, turning to speak to Lydie in the backseat. “It’s really big of you, making an appearance at this thing.”

Lydie smiled, then resumed staring at the back of Didier’s head. He drove his Citroën toward the Louvre in fits and starts, using the brake twice as often as necessary.

“Why do you say it’s big of her?” Didier asked. “She is going because she wants to see the Salle des Quatre Saisons.”

“She is giving Michael his due,” Patrice said. “She’s keeping her personal feelings out of it, and I commend her.”

“I’m just staying long enough to say hello,” Lydie said, uneasy about the whole enterprise.

Now Didier was searching for a parking spot. For some reason Patrice felt personally responsible for Lydie’s decision to attend Michael’s opening. It put Lydie in mind of a story her father had told her about a boy who convinced a pagan to attend Christmas mass and felt as if he had given Jesus a nonbeliever’s soul for his birthday.

Curiosity, not Patrice, had made Lydie decide to come. She wanted to see Michael’s work, and she wanted to see his response when he caught sight of her. She had not told him she was coming. She didn’t want him on his best behavior, trotting her around, introducing her to people as “
my wife.
” She wanted to slip in with the crowd, catch his eye, and see what would happen. Dressing as she had, however, she could not pretend she didn’t want him to notice her at all. She wore a black dress by Azzadine Alaia, form-fitting to say the least, with a deep “V” in back.

She and the d’Orignys presented their engraved invitations to a guard and he pointed the way. “I know where it is,” Didier said importantly. “We know Monsieur McBride.”

Suddenly Lydie felt charged with anticipation. The event was gala, after all. The man just ahead of them used an ebony walking stick although he had no limp. Women wore their best dresses. People chattered, craning their necks. Everyone looked important, although Lydie could not say why. Perhaps the occasion gave importance to the crowd, the way it would at ballet premieres, first nights on Broadway, presidential inaugurations.

They entered the Salle and Lydie blocked the door, taking everything in. Her gaze lit on a beautiful long table—it could only be the information table Michael had commissioned. A mosaic floor glinted here and there with tiny gold tiles. Beneath the smell of perfume and hot food, she detected the scent of new plaster. A tapestry covering an entire wall depicted men returning from a hunt. But above all, her eye was drawn to a painting between the doors.

She stared at it and tried to place the story: a scene from Greek mythology? There was Mercury—she recognized his winged feet. A dead boy lay on the ground before a god at once handsome and tortured. Herds of cows, a magnificent tree, Cupid, nymphs.

“It’s called
Apollo and Daphne
,” Patrice said, coming over with
a printed guide. “I can’t tell who’s supposed to be Daphne unless she’s the one in the tree.”

Now that Lydie knew the painting’s title, she remembered the story. “That’s her—in her father’s arms,” Lydie said, pointing. “It hasn’t been working out for her and Apollo.”

“What’s not to work out?” Patrice asked in her burlesque voice. “Check out Apollo.”

Now Lydie began to look around, subtly she hoped, for Michael. There were Arthur Chase, Dot Graulty, Dot’s husband. Her head averted, Patrice said, “Look over my right shoulder. See the tall guy?”

“Which one?”

“The one who looks like a Minister.”

“Yes?”

“He’s Jacques de Vauvray, the Minister of Culture. The guy he’s standing with—the stumpy one? He’s Pierre Dauphin, a sort-of friend of Didier’s.”

“I think I’ve heard Michael mention him,” Lydie said. She could see Michael now, talking to a man covered with war decorations. By the way he edged back, she knew he had seen her and was trying to end the conversation. “Here he comes,” she said.

“Did I say I need to use the ladies’ room?” Patrice asked diplomatically, but Michael had already joined them.

“Hello,” he said. The moment was awkward. He should have kissed Patrice’s cheeks, but how could he do that without kissing Lydie?

“It’s wonderful,” Lydie said of the Salle. “I love that painting.” Michael glanced up at
Apollo and Daphne
. He had had his hair cut for the occasion. Was it Lydie’s imagination, or was that hair oil? She had never seen him use it before, but she thought he looked handsome, his wavy hair slightly slicked back, like someone from the Lost Generation. “The painting was my second choice,” he said.

He wore a double-breasted pinstriped suit that looked extremely European compared to his usual single-breasted blazers from Brooks Brothers or J. Press. His shoes were not shoes at all, but
boots
. Ankle-high black boots with slightly pointed toes: Italian jodhpur boots. Lydie could hardly believe it. She had a clinical urge to engage him in conversation—like a graduate student doing research to learn how deeply he had changed—but she felt speechless.

“This is the most fantastic information center I have ever seen,” Patrice said. “It’s beautiful
and
informative. I do have one question, though: where’s the ladies’ room?”

“Through that door,” Michael said, pointing.

As Patrice walked away, Lydie resumed watching Michael.

“So, you like it?” he asked.

“Yes—a lot,” she said. She knew she should tell him
what
she liked and
why
, but she felt totally captivated by his personal affects: hair, clothes, shoes.

“Didier’s kept me up-to-date on the ball,” Michael said, “but what’s happening with Kelly?”

“She’ll be interviewed at the embassy soon,” Lydie said. “Can I ask—is that hair oil you’re wearing?”

“Greasy kid stuff,” Michael said, grinning.

“No kidding,” she said. “It looks good.”

“There’ll be pictures later, and I didn’t want to look too American. Give the journalists fuel for their fire.”

Now Lydie looked around. She found the Salle very comfortable and harmonious, the paintings well positioned, the information table solid and authentic. “Why are you worried?” she asked. “This place does just what it should do: it provides information in a gallery atmosphere. If there’s a long line at the information desk, people can look around at the paintings.”

“That was the idea,” Michael said. “I’m glad you think it works.”

Under cover of social pleasantries, passionate looks were passing between Lydie and Michael. She felt a burning desire to touch his hand. She wanted him to bend her over backwards in a long kiss. It hit her hard, the fact that everything that had happened might be worth it if they could fall in love all over again. How many couples, after all this time, had the chance to feel the intensity of new love?

“Can I get you something?” Michael asked. “How about a glass of champagne?”

“Sure,” Lydie said. “That would be fine.”

As he walked away, Lydie surveyed the room. There, in the corner, was Patrice talking to Anne Dumas. The sight of them, her tall friend and the dwarfish home-wrecker, brought Lydie out of the romantic mist. She watched them, chatting like two old friends, and felt a variety of things: hatred for Anne, fury at Patrice for being civil to her, curiosity for what they were talking about. Michael came back with the drinks.

Lydie accepted the champagne and drank a sip of it. She had known this would likely happen, that the possibility of running into Anne Dumas was strong. She felt her teeth against the glass.

“Don’t let it upset you, Lydie,” Michael said, following her eyes. “She works here. I couldn’t tell her not to come.”

“I know,” she said.

“I wanted you to come,” Michael said. “You know I did.”

“Yes,” Lydie said. Here she stood in the Salle des Quatre Saisons, at a celebration of Michael’s work—their reason, after all, for coming to France—and she could speak only in monosyllables.

“Let’s go over there,” Michael said. “I’d like to introduce you to Charles Legendre.”

Lydie smiled at him. “I’d rather not meet him right now,” she said. “In fact, I’m about to leave.” She felt tempted to stay, but sticking to her original plan made her feel more in control.

“Aw, Lydie,” Michael said.

She smiled again, at the idea that such a dashing guy, so elegant and European in style, could say “Aw, Lydie.”

“You sound just like a country boy,” she said.

“I have to stay,” Michael said. “I’d like to come with you … where are you going?”

“I’m going to walk home. Will you tell the d’Orignys for me?”

“Yes,” Michael said. And although it had been too awkward to kiss her hello, he kissed her good-bye.

Exiting the Louvre, Lydie knew she wouldn’t have left if she thought there was a chance Michael would go home with Anne. She wondered what Patrice had been talking to her about. The history of the Marais, probably. Turning right to walk home along the Seine, she discovered that she didn’t care. Hardly at all.

Patrice had the uncomfortable sense of not simply praising Anne Dumas’s work, but of gushing. “I’m positively captivated,” she said, for measure. She cast a sidelong glance at Michael and Lydie, felt unhappy to see that they were looking in her direction.

“What ‘captivates’ you?” Anne asked, dimpling.

“Oh, the way you make those seventeenth-century women seem so modern. I feel absolutely
d’accord
with them.”

Now Anne frowned. “You cannot possibly feel
d’accord
with all three. When they were at such obvious odds.”

“It’s true,” Patrice agreed. “The noblewoman, the courtesan, and the murderer. Which is your favorite?”

“Madame de Sévigné, of course. Though I admit to a certain
fascination with Ninon de Lenclos. By the age of thirty, Ninon was famous as an intellectual and as an advocate of women’s rights. Her opinions in matters of sex and religion were totally avant-garde. Members of the King’s court frequented her salon.”

“But Ninon stole Madame de Sévigné’s husband,” Patrice said, watching for Anne’s reaction. She could not stop imagining Anne in bed with Michael. She was so adorable, with those tiny features that all seemed somehow upturned: her nose, the smiling corners of her eyes, her bow mouth with the sensual lower lip. Her full hair, brushed up and held in place with a silk headband, was expertly tinted to look sun-lightened. Her rose suede miniskirt was too short for this season, but Anne had the girlishness to carry it off.